"JONES"
"Isn't that a famous idea?" demanded Mr. Grimes, for the second time.
"I--I am not so sure, sir," Helen stammered.
"Why, of course it is!" he cried, smiting the desk before him with the
flat of his palm. "Don't you see that your father's name will be cleared
of all doubt? And quite right, too! He never _was_ guilty."
"It makes me quite happy to hear you say so," said the girl, wiping her
eyes. "But how about the bookkeeper?"
"Who--Allen?"
"Yes, sir."
"Well, we couldn't find him now. If he kept hidden then, when there was a
hue and cry out for him, what chance would there be of finding him after
seventeen years? Oh, no! Allen can't be found. And, even if he could, I
doubt but the thing is outlawed. I don't know that the authorities would
take it up. And I am pretty sure the creditors of the old firm would
not."
"That is not what I mean," said Helen, softly. "But suppose we accuse this
bookkeeper--_and he is not guilty, either_?"
"Well! Is that any great odds? Nobody knows where he is----"
"But suppose he should reappear," persisted Helen. "Suppose somebody who
loved him--a daughter, perhaps, as I am the daughter of Prince
Morrell--with just as great a desire to clear her father's name as I have
to clear mine---- Suppose such a person should appear determined to prove
Mr. Chesterton not guilty, too?"
"Ha, but we've beat 'em to it--don't you see?" demanded Mr. Grimes,
heartlessly.
"Oh, sir! I could not take such an apparent victory at such a cost!" cried
Helen, wiping her eyes again. "You say you _believe_ Allen Chesterton was
guilty instead of father. But you put forward no evidence--no more than
the mere suspicion that cursed poor dad. No, no, sir! To claim new
evidence, but to show no new evidence, is not enough. I must find out for
sure just who stole that money. That is what dad himself said would be the
only way in which his name could be cleared."
"Nonsense, girl!" ejaculated Fenwick Grimes, scowling again.
"I am sorry to go against both your wishes and Uncle Starkweather's," said
Helen, slowly. "But I want the truth! I can't be satisfied with anything
but the truth about this whole unfortunate business.
"It made poor dad very unhappy when he was dying. It troubled my poor
mother--so _he_ said--all her life out there in Montana. I want to know
where the money went--who got it--all about it. Then I can prove to people
that it was not _my_ father who committed the crime."
"This is a very quixotic thing you have undertaken, my girl," remarked Mr.
Grimes, with a sudden change in his manner.
"I hope not. I hope I shall learn the truth."
"How?"
He shot the question at her as from a gun. His face had grown very grim
and his sly little eyes gleamed threateningly. More than ever did Helen
dislike and fear this man. The avaricious light in his eyes as he noted
the money she carried on the train, had first warned her against him. Now,
when she knew so much more about him, and how he was immediately connected
with her father's old trouble, Helen feared him all the more.
Because of his love of money alone, she could not trust him. And he had
suggested something which was, upon the face of it, dishonest and unfair.
She rose from her seat and shook her head slowly.
"I do not know how," Helen said, sadly. "But I hope something may turn up
to help me. I understand that you have never known anything about Allen
Chesterton since he ran away?"
"Not a thing," declared Mr. Grimes, shortly, rising as well.
"It is through him I hoped to find the truth," she murmured.
"So you won't accept my help?" growled Mr. Grimes.
"Not--not the kind you offer. It--it wouldn't be right," Helen replied.
"Very well, then!" snapped the man, and opened the door into the outer
office. As he ushered her into the other room the outer door opened and a
shabby man poked his head and shoulders in at the door.
"I say!" he said, quaveringly. "Is Mr. Grimes----"
"Get out of here, you old ruffian!" cried Fenwick Grimes, flying into a
sudden passion. "Of course, you'd got to come around to-day!"
"I only wanted to say, Mr. Grimes----"
"Out of my sight!" roared Grimes. "Here, Leggett!" to his clerk; "give
Jones a dollar and let him go. I can't see him now."
"Jones, sir?" queried the clerk, seemingly somewhat staggered, and looking
from his employer to the old scarecrow in the doorway.
"Yes, sir!" snarled Mr. Grimes. "I said Jones, sir--Jones, Jones, Jones!
Do you understand plain English, Mr. Leggett? Take that dollar on the desk
and give it into the hands of _Jones_ there at the door. And then oblige
me by kicking him down the steps if he doesn't move fast enough."
Leggett moved rapidly himself after this. He seemed to catch his
employer's real meaning, and he grabbed the dollar and chased the beggar
out into the hall. Grimes, meanwhile, held Helen back a bit. But he had
nothing of any consequence to say.
Finally she bade him good-morning and went out of the office. She had not
given him Uncle Starkweather's letter. Somehow, she thought it best not to
do so. If she had been doubtful of the sincerity of her uncle when she
broached the subject nearest her heart, she had been much more suspicious
of Fenwick Grimes.
She walked composedly enough out of the building; but it was hard work to
keep back the tears. It _did_ seem such a great task for a mere girl to
attempt! And nobody would help her. She had nobody in whom to
confide--nobody with whom she might discuss the mystery.
And when she told herself this her mind naturally flashed to the only real
friend she had made in New York--Sadie Goronsky. Helen had looked up a map
of the city the evening before in her uncle's library, and she had marked
the streets intervening between this place where she had interviewed her
father's old partner, and Madison Street on the East Side.
She had ridden downtown to Washington Arch; so she felt equal to the walk
across town and down the Bowery to the busy street where Sadie plied her
peculiar trade.
She crossed the Square and went through West Broadway to Bleecker Street
and turned east on that busy and interesting thoroughfare. Suddenly, right
ahead of her, she beheld the shabby brown hat and wrinkled coat of the old
man who had stuck his head in at the door of Mr. Grimes's office, and so
disturbed the equilibrium of that individual.
Here was "Jones." At first Helen thought him to be under the influence of
drink. Then she saw that the man's erratic actions must be the result of
some physical or mental disability.
The old man could not walk in a straight line; but he tacked from one side
of the walk to the other, taking long "slants" across the walk, first
touching the iron balustrade of a step on one hand, and then bringing up
at a post on the edge of the curb.
He seemed to mutter all the time to himself, too; but what he said, or
whether it was sense, or nonsense, Helen (although she walked near him)
could not make out. She did not wish to offend the old man; yet he seemed
so helpless and peculiar that for several blocks she trailed him (as he
seemed to be going her way), fearing that he would get into some trouble.
At the busy crossings Helen was really worried. The man first started,
then dodged back, scouted up and down the way, seemed undecided, looked
all around as though for help, and then, at the very worst time, when the
vehicles in the street were the most numerous, he darted across, escaping
death and destruction half a dozen times between curb and curb.
But somehow the angel that directs the destinies of foolish people who
cross busy city streets, shielded him from harm, and Helen finally lost
him as he turned down one of the main stems of the town while she kept on
into the heart of the East Side.
And to Helen Morrell, the very "heart of the East Side" was right in the
Goronsky flat on Madison Street. She had been comparing that home at the
same number on Madison Street with that her uncle's house boasted on
Madison Avenue, with the latter mansion. The Goronsky tenement was a
_home_, for love and contentment dwelt there; the stately Starkweather
dwelling housed too many warring factions to be a real home.
Helen came, at length, to Madison Street. She had timed her coming so as
to reach Jacob Finkelstein's shop just about the time Sadie would be going
to dinner.
"Miss Helen! Ain't I glad to see you?" cried Sadie. "Is there anything the
matter with the dress, yet?"
"No, Miss Sadie. I was downtown and thought I would ask you to go to
dinner with me. I went with you yesterday."
"O-oo my! I don't know," said Sadie, shaking her head. "I bet you'd like
to come home with me instead--no?"
"I would like to. But it would not be right for me to accept your
hospitality and never return it," said Helen.
"Chee! you must 'a' had a legacy," laughed Sadie.
"I--I have a little more money than I had yesterday," admitted Helen,
which was true, for she had taken some out of the wallet in the trunk
before she left her uncle's house.
"Well, when you swells feel like spendin' there ain't no stoppin' youse, I
suppose," declared Sadie. "Do you wanter fly real high?"
"I guess we can afford a real nice dinner," said Helen, smiling.
"Are you good for as high as thirty-fi' cents apiece?" demanded Sadie.
"Yes."
"Chee! Then I can take you to a stylish place where we can get a swell
feed at noon, for that. It's up on Grand Street. All the buyers and
department store heads go there with the wholesale salesmen for lunch.
Wait till I git me hat!" and away Sadie shot, up the tenement house
stairs, so fast that her little feet, bound by the tight skirt she wore,
seemed fairly to twinkle.
Helen had but a few moments to wait on the sidewalk; yet within that short
time something happened to change the entire current of the day's
adventures. She heard some boys shouting from the direction of the Bowery;
there was a crowd crossing the street diagonally; she watched it with some
apprehension at first, for it came right along the sidewalk toward her.
"Hi, fellers! See de Lurcher! Here comes de Lurcher!" yelled one ribald
youth, who leaped on the stoop to which Helen had retreated the better to
see over the heads of the crowd at the person who was the core of it.
And then Helen, in no little amazement, saw that this individual was none
other than the man whom she had seen driven out of Fenwick Grimes's
office. A gang of hoodlums surrounded him. They jeered at him, tore at his
ragged clothes, hooted, and otherwise nagged the poor old fellow.
At every halt he made they pressed closer upon the "Lurcher." It was easy
to see why he had been given that name. He was probably an old inhabitant
of the neighborhood, and his lurching from side to side of the walk had
suggested the nickname to some local wit.
Just as he steered for the rail of the step on which Helen stood, half
fearful, and reached it, Sadie Goronsky came bounding out of the house.
Instantly she took a hand--and as usual a master hand--in the affair.
"What you doin' to that old man, you Izzy Strefonifsky? And, Freddie
Bloom, you stop or I'll tell your mommer! Ike, let him alone, or I'll make
your ears tingle myself--I can do it, too!"
Sadie charged as she commanded. The hoodlums scattered--some laughing,
some not so easily intimidated. But the old man was clinging to the rail
and muttering over and over to himself:
"They got my dollar--they got my dollar."
"What's that?" cried Sadie, coming back after chasing the last of the boys
off the block. "What's the matter, Mr. Lurcher?"
"My dollar--they got my dollar," muttered the old man.
"Oh, dear!" whispered Helen. "And perhaps it was all he had."
"You can bet it was," said Sadie, angrily. "The likes of him wouldn't
likely have _two_ dollars all at once! I'd like to scalp those imps! That
I would!"
The old man, paying little attention to the two girls, but still muttering
about his loss, lurched away on his erratic course homeward.
"Chee!" said Sadie. "Ain't that tough luck? He lives right around the
corner, all alone. And he's just as poor as he can be. I don't know what
his real name is. But the boys guy him sumpin' fierce! Ain't it mean?"
"It certainly is," agreed Helen.
"Say!" said Sadie, abruptly, but looking at Helen with sheepish eye.
"Well, what?"
"Say, was yer _honest_ goin' to blow seventy cents for that feed I spoke
of up on Grand Street?"
"Certainly. And I----"
"And a dime to the waiter?"
"Of course."
"That's eighty cents," ran on Sadie, glibly enough now. "And twenty would
make a dollar. I'll dig up the twenty cents to put with your eighty, and
what d'ye say we run after old Lurcher an' give him a dollar--say we found
it, you know--and then go upstairs to my house for dinner? Mommer's got a
nice dinner, and she'd like to see you again fine!"
"I'll do it!" cried Helen, pulling out her purse at once. "Here! Here's a
dollar bill. You run after him and give it to him. You can give me the
twenty cents later."
"Sure!" cried the Russian girl, and she was off around the corner in the
wake of the Lurcher, with flying feet.
Helen waited for her friend to return, just inside the tenement house
door. When Sadie reappeared, Helen hugged her tight and kissed her.
"You are a _dear_!" the Western girl cried. "I do love you, Sadie!"
"Aw, chee! That ain't nothin'," objected the East Side girl. "We poor
folks has gotter help each other."
So Helen would not spoil the little sacrifice by acknowledging to more
money, and they climbed the stairs again to the Goronsky tenement. The
girl from Sunset Ranch was glad--oh, so glad!--of this incident. Chilled
as she had been by the selfishness in her uncle's Madison Avenue mansion,
she was glad to have her heart warmed down here among the poor of Madison
Street.